The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday termed the United Progressive Alliance government's two-year regime as a “saga of betrayals” and said, “its performance is thoroughly disappointing”.
Addressing presspersons here, senior BJP leader M. Venkaiah Naidu said “the UPA's performance is shameful and scamful.” Indecision, inaction, incompetence, irreparable damage to the institutions were, he said, the hallmarks of the UPA government, which has completed two years in office.
“Not to speak of [the lack of] any positive achievements, it has failed miserably to live up to even the basic expectations of the people. The UPA-II started its term with a flurry of announcements of 100-day agendas. More than 700 days later, there is no mention of the agendas. There is a big disconnect between the rulers and the ruled,” he said.
‘Bad governance'
Stating that the UPA regime is marked by bad governance, he observed that over 24 Bills had lapsed and 20 other Bills were pending for the past five years. “The Government suffers from a competence deficit,” he said.
‘Unfulfilled promises'
“The list of unfulfilled promises is unending,” he said, citing, among others, the right to food, physical infrastructure in rural areas, six-lane highways, nine-per-cent growth rate, the law on land acquisition and rehabilitation, judicial and police reforms. The BJP leader said “scams are stupendous and stunning, involving thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are the Commonwealth Games scam, involving Rs.70,000 crore, the 2G spectrum scam involving Rs. 1.72 lakh crore, the IPL scam, the S-Band spectrum scam, the Adarsh Society scam involving Army and IAS officers and Ministers, and and shocking telephone-tapping to mobilise support and harass political opponents.”
‘Farm sector neglected'
Corruption and inflation, he said, were two major achievements of the UPA-II government. The farm sector had been neglected; it had failed to contain price rise, and the rise in food prices hurt the poor the most. He said petrol prices were raised several times under the garb of rationalisation.
He said the “inexcusable goof-ups” in the list, which the Home Ministry gave to Pakistan, of “most-wanted” terrorists had made India a “laughing stock” in the international community. “It shows the casual approach of the government in such a sensitive security matter. There is no political leadership to guide the government and hence there is a divergent approach between the party leadership and the government.”
On the issue of black money, the BJP observed that there had been no action, despite repeated rebukes from the Supreme Court, against those who had stashed thousands of crores of unaccounted money away in foreign shores. “Certainly, their identities are to be made public. Why is the government so [actively maintaining] the secrecy [in an issue] for which after all the defaulters have to be prosecuted? Why is the UPA government so keen and hell-bent on protecting the tax evaders?”
He said Constitutional impropriety and step-motherly treatment was being meted out to non-UPA States. Democracy, he said, had been subverted by the misuse of the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Income Tax department.
